When the news of Karl Lagerfeld’s death broke on Tuesday, the fashion world burst forth with condolences, praise and respect for the 85-year-old designer. And, with good reason.

Lagerfeld was not just a fashion designer, in the singular sense. He was an icon.

“Karl Lagerfeld was a fashion rock star,” Noreen Flanagan, the editor-in-chief of Fashion Magazine, says. “I remember being at the after party following the resort collection in Singapore and women of all ages — who were dressed head-to-toe in Chanel — were clamouring like teenage girls to get a photograph of him.”

Karl Lagerfeld was the creative director of the House of CHANEL from 1983 to 2019.

Lagerfeld, who held the title of creative director for the House of CHANEL from 1983 to 2019, is credited with taking the creative vision left behind by the brand’s founder Gabrielle Chanel, and wholly modernizing it, effectively propelling the French fashion house into the stratosphere of luxury brands. While also ensuring it reached both billion-dollar and cult status, simultaneously.

“Lagerfeld revived the Chanel house,” Flanagan says. “In a press release from the company they quoted him as once saying, ‘My job is not to do what she did, but what she would have done.’

“He achieved that with his inventive and modern twists on Coco’s iconic tweeds, handbags and black dresses. He also introduced his own witty touches that made his designs distinctly Karl.”

To be familiar with Lagerfeld as a designer, either through his work at CHANEL, his eponymous brand or through his longtime design role at the Italian fashion house Fendi, was to understand only a small part of who the revered designer truly was. In order to glean a truer sense, one would have had to have met him.

Vancouver-based fashion journalist and on-air personality Susie Wall recalls, vividly, the first time she interviewed Lagerfeld.

“In May of 2005, Chanel was hosting an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I was sent to New York to interview Mr. Lagerfeld for the television program eTalk, and also to cover the red carpet for the Costume Institute Gala — now the Met Gala — that evening. It was a dream assignment,” she recalls.

While some people would have been nervous to meet Lagerfeld, Wall recalls feeling only one emotion: awe.

“I remember I had packed what I thought would be the ideal wardrobe for the interview. But about an hour before I was to leave my hotel for the museum, I received a request that it would be appreciated if I wore entirely white for my meeting with Mr. Lagerfeld,” she recalls. “Luckily, I had a white cotton blazer, balled up in my suitcase, from days previous in Los Angeles. I steamed it, tucked the white tank top that I had, literally, just slept in, into a pair of high-waisted, wide-legged white trousers with a pair of pointed toed-white mules by Emma Hope — and off I went.”

Despite the high-stakes environment of needing to shoot an interview in a relatively short period of time — with one of the most celebrated designers in fashion history, nonetheless — the two shared a laugh.

“It was shortly after his dramatic weight loss, and before the interview began, he politely requested a glass of Diet Coke, no ice, in a stemmed wine glass. He smiled a Cheshire grin and asked if I would prefer a glass of the real thing. I don’t recall my exact response — but I quipped something — and it made him laugh out loud,” she says. “My crew breathed a giant, collective sigh of relief. And there began the tone for what would be a relaxed, fascinating discussion. I returned to my room after the gala that evening to a pair of white CHANEL sunglasses, a CHANEL coffee table book and a thank-you note that is still tucked inside.”

Flanagan recounts her encounter with Lagerfeld in a similarly fond way.

“I met Lagerfeld when he was in Toronto a few years ago. I was the last writer to chat with him after a very long day of interviews. It was after 10 p.m. and I was tired. I expected our chat would be brief as he would be keen return to Choupette, who was staying with him at the Four Seasons,” she says. “Instead, I was drawn into the indomitable vortex of energy that he radiated. We chatted about his cat, the power of the Jenner clan and supermodels.

“He was disarmingly charming and generous.”

It was this charm and his well-documented wit that rendered him a favourite of so many fashion fans and editors.

“Like his muse, Lagerfeld was an iconoclast with a revolutionary and irreverent temperament. I think he will inspire just as many musicals, movies and books as Coco. And his quotable quotes will continue to be just as witty, acerbic and iconic,” Flanagan says.

But it was his forward-looking fashion sense that undoubtedly kept Lagerfeld at the forefront of his industry — and will continue to do so, for many years to come.

“One could say it was that he personified refinement, culture, authenticity. And I absolutely wouldn’t argue that,” Wall says of the late designer’s icon status. “But Karl Lagerfeld also wasn’t stuck. At 85 years old, his lens was still on the street. He engaged youth. He was so inspired by the current landscape of culture and influence — and he put that into luxury. And because his eyes were wide open, he was able to shape shift, to reinvent himself and to stay relevant across generations.

“You could say it was what he did for CHANEL, for Paris or for his inimitable interpretation of the runway. But, to me, it was that he didn’t just create style — he was style.”